To keep toddlers happy, we throw pennies at a wall and keep score in their heads. Then we try nickels. Once we had to quit and Fletcher, a little towhead, cried, “I learned to count by fives for nothing.”
Pitching coins is more productive than throwing money at some government programs. Some increase inequality, or cause bigger forest fires, and the feedback loop from effectiveness to budgeting has been broken for generations.
When all the coins in my purse are thrown, we play a game to pick up coins – fast! Effective parents pick up toys that way at bedtime. Congress seldom picks up after itself; politicians leave the debt for the next generation. They beg us for more money when they have misspent the taxes we have already paid. Congress promises to tax more fairly this time, and promise you won’t have to pay -- the other guy will. Then everyone pays in inflation or corporate, income, mileage and sales taxes, or whatever can be taxed.
No toddler ever whined about picking up the coins we used for the next game. If a child was too young or uncoordinated to win, he got to be “the subtractor.” His scores were taken off the players he chose – at the end of the game, he changed the outcome but never knew his score. The toddler was ecstatic, but voters should be more aware.
Congress at 535 Members is big enough to hide its individual transgressions, players and subtractors all. To the applause of some voters, incumbents “bring home the bacon” as if each bill has only one champion many times over. In a very long short speech, Representative Patrick Kennedy bragged about things his father “did.” He solved immigration in 1965, cured cancer in 1971, saved health insurance with COBRA, solved race relations in 1986, and created heaven on earth for the disabled in 1990. No one in Congress or in the executive branch programs had any part … including me, who worked two jobs to pay for Senator Kennedy’s “accomplishments.” Teddy accomplished all this all by himself.
But the best game Congress plays is the three-time hot potato during President Trump and now for Mr. Biden -- the debt ceiling. Spending recriminations are wiped clean like an Etch-a-Sketch. According to Nancy Pelosi, we have to pay the debt that has just surprised the hell out of us! Wide eyed and innocent, we have already spent all our money and the debt ceiling is just a cursory and essential process. So says our grandmother Janet Yellen as she espouses a worldwide 15% tax, You have to believe Rep. Adam Schiff too, Now we will be concerned and care about our fiscal house and reputation because we have GOT to pay all our bills….
GOP candidates are always running on fiscal sanity. We GOP worker bees work so hard to elect them, they cannot possibly cave, right? This time, they will stand on principle! Or if they do cave on the debt ceiling, we will bargain for concessions on future spending. We’ll negotiate to get the 75,000 jobs lost in the Keystone Pipeline Executive Order … we will put some sense into immigration reform and stop the flood of migrants at the border.
With talk of a shutdown, Minority Leader of the Senate Mitch McConnell’s “raise the debt ceiling by yourselves” stance lasted a week. But last week 10 GOP Senators caved. Without any concessions the people know of, a “short term” increase in the debt ceiling of “only” half a trillion dollars. Immediately, the Democrats’ holdout from West Virginia Joe Manchin, having gotten his press posing as a tough negotiator, agrees to the more expensive $3.5 billion dollar legislation, as anyone who watches him expected. The debt crisis is over, Democratic wish list is back.
Recently my husband was our rental. He “deputized” the renter’s children to find a threshold that had disappeared, and they proudly returned their new toy. But what is the weight? The amused mother chimed in that the anchor was in the shed. At first glance, Mr. Fix It and his deputies found no anchor. Disappointed, the three-year-old asked, “Why would Mommy lie?”
Mommy hadn’t lied, but taxpayers could use the wisdom of children. We did not learn to count by fives for nuthin’.